BIRTH OF THE FORBIDDEN CITY

"THE FORBIDDEN CITY, how shall we discuss what was never meant to be to be discussed? It is a place of mystery, like so many places are when they have to do with those unspoken horrors that have plaqued mankind since its birth. Let us start at the beginning. . .

WHEN MAN DESCENDED the trees and swung out onto his feet, an upright creature of thought, with those thoughts came dreams and with those dreams, nightmare. Nightmare was seperated and deligated a place in the sleeping hours, the dark, the shadow. In those shadows, the beings of nightmare grew strong and grew in number until they rivalled man in their population. Then began the first of the Blood Wars. These battles raged in the night sometimes in the realm of dream but more often than not in the shadowed places over the souls and bodies of man upon which the Shadow fed. It is enough to say that the Monsters, those Nightmare beings became an adversary all through the long years of Man's reign upon the Earth. For Man did overcome them and the Shadows retreated once again into the dark of night.

SOMETIME, IN THE MORE RECENT history of that inspirational being called Humanity a new villain came to light. Man as the Monster of Man's nightmare. In the late 19th and 20th century, the common man if asked what he feared the most would invariably answer with a reference to one of man's own form of monster. Psychopaths, sociopaths, sexual predators, and threats from one or another imagined masked and easily named fear, these became the norm and the Shadows, those old world beings of myth and legend faded away.

WITH NEWFOUND FREEDOM in obscurity and disbelief, these Old World Monsters grew strong again. Following ancient laws of their own they meddled no more than was necessary in the affairs of Mankind. And so fading memory hid the Shadow.

IT IS THIS way that we find them in the Forbidden City. A place of their own, a place for the Monsters. Here the shadows are long and the rule is final. The strongest survive and the Shadow is everpresent. What is the Shadow you ask? Look up, there high in the sky is the Tower of the Eternal. The place where law is dispensed, rites are held and decisions are made. One mile above the city stretches the Finger of Fate, casting a shadow upon all that lies beneath. There is your answer.

YOU ARE NEW here? Ah...well of course you are, else I would not be discussing our history with you now, for you would know it. From here the island becomes a city. A warren, a den, a nest of the arcane and mystery that has left the world alone. Go inside...I won't tell you to not be afraid for you should be afraid, it is not for the weak of sinew or heart within. What sort of things might you find? No, no, do not be put off by my laughter. Inside you will find everything. Everything that you have ever feared or dreaded or even in your perversity wished were real, for here in the Forbidden City...it is real. What you will not find, of course are madmen with knives or masked killers with blank staring eyes. Those are man's monsters. We are the Shadow Tribes and We are legion. Our masks don't come off..."